


Love and Other Disasters

by bridgetlynn



Category: Fast & Furious 6 (2013), Fast Five (2011), Fast and the Furious Series, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006)
Genre: Drama, F/M, Organized Crime, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 19:39:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bridgetlynn/pseuds/bridgetlynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is messy and never goes the way you planned. Love is worse. Trish has learned that the hard way. A brother who acts like he hates her. A man she loves who only seems to show interest when he wants something. A 'career' that has her changing her name regularly to avoid trouble. In an underground kingdom she's the Queen no one knows but always needs. A Phantom behind the screen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The Fast and the Furious franchise is owned by Universal Pictures, various producers including (but not limited to) Neal H. Moritz, Vin Diesel, Michael Fottrell and Clayton Townsend. It is the intellectual property of writers Gary Scott Thompson, Erik Bergquist, David Ayer, Michael Brandt, Derek Haas and Chris Morgan. Last, but not least, Ken Li, author of "Racer X" the story the first movie was based upon, also has a piece of the pie.   
> I technically 'own' the very few characters you will not recognize from the series, including Trish, this story's protagonist. However, that does not mean I am making a single shiny penny off of this story. If anything, I am aquiring debt as writing it takes away time from doing things that could be making me money. 
> 
> Kind of important story-note: This is my first F&F fanfic. I feel like I should offer that up straight away. I haven't written anything for pleasure in almost two years because I just couldn't find a single piece of inspiration. It's sick and twisted and kind of disturbing (to me) that the recent tragic passing of Paul Walker (R.I.P. I am still in shock) apparently stirred up some writing bugs in me. But then again, find me a writer who claims to be totally 'normal' in the head and I'll show you a liar. We tend to live in our imaginations and look at the world just a little cock-eyed. 
> 
> Now, for this story I spent quite a few hours working out a realistic timeline of the series (down to possible/realistic ages of characters). The movie series would almost have us believe that the movies happened near consecutively. I have a major problem believing this so, well, in my little world they didn't (ex: there is no way in hell Jack O'Conner is a few days old when Dom shows up to tell Mia and Brian about Letty. He's holding his damned head up himself!). So in this story there is some space to breathe between films where other things happened. This story, god willing nothing happens on my end, is going to start before the film series begins and follow through it up until the end of Tokyo Drift (after that is open season as far as I'm concerned); but, at the same time, will not be a simple rehashing of the films. I've seen them, you've seen them, my character is (hopefully) not some Mary-Sue who is suddenly interjected into the cast. She's highly intelligent, a little weird and somewhat amoral about things like money and who it really belongs to and why she should take it off their hands. But she's not some brilliant racer/action superhero/genius mechanic. She has connections to the cast, but she's not just suddenly there in the films. That's not how I write. I write in the universe...I don't rehash everything you already know. I hope you can be patient and stick with it and I very much hope you enjoy it.

_January 2012_

I've learned a lot in my life and I've heard a lot of unsolicited cliched statements from a lot of pretty cliched people during that life about how I should live.  
  
 _Life is but a roll of the dice._ My mother. _I live my life a quarter mile a time._ Dominic Toretto. _You make choices and you don't look back._ My friend, lover, husband of convience depending on the day of the week. _Good intentions are nothing without hard work._ Luke Hobbs, my current personal jailer, I mean, employer.  
  
Mrs. Gump probably said it best though when she compared life to a box of chocolates; you really do never know what you're going to get.   
  
Because the simple truth of the matter is that life is complicated. There's no fate or grand design to life. There's just you and everyone around you. Life is all at once messy, confusing, heartbreaking, frustrating and never really goes the way you initially planned.   
  
Hell, if a plan never survives first contact with the enemy then life is the biggest, most evil, son of a bitch you could ever throw down with. I figured that out by the time I was eleven and decided from that point on that my life would be lived in a series of short-term goals. As long as I worked my way from one goal to the next I'd probably be fine.   
  
Probably.    
  
For example, if you told me ten years ago that at the age of thirty-two I would be in another country legally stalking both my ex-husband and an apparent sociopath, with the full backing and power of the D.S.S., I'd probably have laughed in your face. That was seriously, seriously, never in the plans.  
For more then a few reasons.   
  
Marriage, theorically, should be something sacred and I'm living proof that it isn't. Why would I want to legally tie myself to someone so I could stand by and wait for them to fuck me over? If I love someone and they love me? Awesome. I neve wanted paperwork telling me this. I honestly think the news that I would be working for the Diplomatic Security Service, in some capacity, might have come as a lesser shock.   
  
If the FBI hires hackers and basically pays them to stop them from doing illegal shit; then why couldn't the D.S.S.?  
  
Now, despite my twenty-two year old self's shock and horror at the situation, I'm still sitting in the middle Tokyo in an ostentatious Nissan 370z that I've been informed will blend in nicely wherever my ex goes. Speaking of which, I can almost see my ex's expression if he heard my disdain for the vehicle; his unflappable cool would probably even be visibly shaken. For about a second. It'd almost be worth seeing if I ever had a chance to voice the thoughts out loud.   
  
Don't get me wrong, I can drive like a bat out of hell when I absolutely need to; I'm not going to hit ninety and suddenly freak out and blow myself up or anything. Hell, at one point in my life, I could even race with the best of them. But, fact is, I'm not seventeen and trying to figure out where I fit in and who I am anymore. I've accepted that I'm a geek and my place in life is behind a computer while someone else handles the action.   
  
I'm happier for it too.  
  
In fact, pretty much everyone I know agrees with me on this very fact.  
  
So why Luke Hobbs, my current boss (by default being that the choice was work with D.S.S. or a fairly lengthy jail sentence), thought it would be a good idea to send me personally to Tokyo with a small team to keep an eye on Han is beyond me. I considered asking if the man actually wanted my ex-husband dead; but I wasn't entirely certain what his answer would be. And if he said yes, I might have had to try and shoot him on principal alone, which would have defeated the purpose of working for him and turning down the jail sentence in the first place.   
  
Which leaves me sitting here, right in the middle of the busy the Shibuya District, waiting for one of two cars that the agents I'm travelling with have managed to plant trackers on to move while studying the images from those same two cars dashboard camera's that I've hacked.  
  
Not that those images have changed in the last three hours either. One showed an empty vehicle and one showed an unmoving male who seemed to be completely focused on staring out the windshield. He had almost stopped scaring me out after the first hour. Now it was just weird and annoying.  
  
Things I've learned since Hobbs broke into my house almost two years ago, stake outs are boring and will cause you to chain smoke due to lack of anything else to do.   
  
Fuck this; radios and back-up exist for a reason.  
  
"Hey Carson?" I asked, the annoyance at the situation bleeding through into my voice.  
  
"What is it O'Conner?"   
  
"Is there a reason we can't just go pick up Shaw? The asshole is still just sitting in his car behind the hotel."  
  
"He hasn't done anything yet O'Conner."  
  
"He's creepy and Hobbs is certain he's a sociopath even worse then his brother; that should be enough. Also, your use of the word yet does not comfort me in the slightest."  
  
"Just shut your mouth, do your job, watch the feed and send us the coordinates if they move O'Conner. Your little boyfriend will be fine."  
  
"Yea, whatever. O'Conner out," I muttered back darkly. "Not my boyfriend," I added almost silently.  
I should remember to thank Hobbs for sending such scintillating personalities with me to Japan; not to mention, apparently, using my ex-husband as bait. Ruining his credit rating could be a nice thank you gift since I can't shoot him. Asshole still hasn't given me back my gun; he claims it's an illegal weapon and he doesn't trust me not to finally just shoot him in the back one day.   
  
I told him I was incredibly offended by the implication that I'd shoot a man in the back and if I was going to shoot him I promise he'd see it coming. He got even less enthusiastic about returning my weapon after that. It's not like I wasn't any good at my current indentured servitude.  
  
Ian Shaw wouldn't even be on our radar if it wasn't for the fact that I might still be a little, just a little mind you, in love with the stupid ass I was currently, legally, stalking.   
  
I maintain that it's completely normal for someone of my skill level to have written a program that tells them if anyone is looking into certain people. It's a very short list of people that Han just happens to be included on. Hell, I even have my asshole half-brother flagged too and I can barely be in the same room as him without wanting to mess up his far too smug face. I blame my nephew for that; the kid shouldn't be at risk of growing up without a Dad like Brian and I did. Even if his dad is Brian O'Conner.   
  
So yea, it's Jack's fault I try not to let anything happen to my sibling...even if he was born years after I added Brian. Even if Brian was the first, and only, person I had in the program for a while.   
  
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  
  
Again, for Jack's sake, I even added Brian's whole motley crew of fellow criminals to my 'saftey-net' program after Hobbs dragged them in to help us with the Owen Shaw case. I'd probably never be in the kids life as his Aunt Trish and quickly realized that those people would be his family. Then I found that I even somewhat liked most of them; once I realized that they could actually do their jobs between rounds of bickering. I've kept my thoughts about Giselle to myself since the end of that job as I was raised to believe that it's rude to speak ill of the dead; and when I'm feeling particularly logical I can admit my issues with her are just that. My own issues.   
  
Plus, I can't really bring myself hate the woman anymore being that she died to save the life of the man we were both stupid over. It'd be easier for me if I could.  
  
My musings were interrupted, thankfully, as I maudlin self-pity had never really been my style by the voice of the current bane of my existence and field leader, Matt Carter, "Hey O'Conner?"   
  
"What?!"  
  
"Are they moving yet?"  
  
"Believe me, if anyone were moving you'd be the first to know. Are you sure we can't just go pick up Shaw? He's got to at least be illegally parked."  
  
"No."  
  
Fine then. If Han gets hurt because Hobbs wants to catch Shaw on something he can actually hold him on, rather then just interruptting his plans, I am definitely shooting the man. Possibly twice. Maybe even in his stupidly large head.   
  
That thought was immediately cancelled out and replaced in my brain by total confusion as I realized one of my trackers had gone from a dead stop to moving all over the place in mere seconds. Han wasn't a reckless driver. Ever. Fast yes; reckless no.   
  
"Hey Carson?"  
  
"No we can't go pick up Shaw."  
  
"No, umm, Han's car is moving. Fast. And beyond erratically. What the hell is going on near the garage?"  
  
"We didn't see shit. Are you sure?"  
  
"Yea; I'd say so," I replied watching the tiny dot begin moving in and out of, what I assumed to be, traffic. I hit a few keys and activated his dashboard camera, taking in the expression of stress on his face and frowned. "Carson? Maybe you should get on the damn road," I added through the radio, knowing he too could see the GPS signal at this point. "Something's going on. And Shaw's starting his car too."  
  
The police scanner I had in my car started picking up chatter about street racers but Han's expression told me this was much more then that. This wasn't driving for money. This wasn't driving for respect. This was driving for your life.   
  
And they were headed right in my direction.   
  
Without making a conscious decision I had the engine turned over and my own GPS tapped in to track the path of Han's RX-7 and relate a path I could take and possibly intercept from where I was.   
This was definitely not a situation to test and see if I could still drive like I could at seventeen. I'm pretty sure Hobbs would stick a murder charge on me if I hit anyone. I couldn't really bring myself to care as I floored the gas pedal.   
  
As I weaved in and out of traffic I made myself ignore the radio and just breathed with the engine and shifted on instinct while keeping half an eye on the two GPS trackers. Han was still flying through the streets and Shaw was creeping along back alleys, stopping every few seconds and obviously waiting on something.  
  
What the hell was he waiting on?  
  
I remembered once when I was sixteen and a friend said precision driving is like making love to your car. At the time I joked back that if you let yourself go out of your head that much while you're driving you're definitely going to be fucked; probably as you hit an unmovable object. I don't think I understood him until this very moment. I hadn't needed to understand him.  
  
And then I swerved around a corner, barely missing a group about to cross the intersection, when I saw them. A black Nissan Fairlady. The red Evo that belonged to Han's new puppy. And the orange RX-7 that I knew for certain contained my ex. The person me and my team had been watching the back of for the last three months.   
  
Not that he knew it.   
  
I jerked around an incoming car and continued following the three cars, further back then I probably should have been, when the gunshots started. I refused to let the sound of them or the barely noticable fear on Han's face in the dashboard camera shake me.   
  
"Who the fuck did you piss off you idiot?!," I screamed at the image of his face and took a second to glance at Shaw's GPS signal and image.   
  
He was waiting near the intersection Han's car was headed towards. The same intersection the police scanner had just announced the cars were heading towards. He had an expression that crossed somewhere between glee and anticipation on his face.   
  
And in that moment I knew.   
  
"Carter where the fuck are you?!" I screamed into the two-way.   
  
"We're a block away O'Conner. Do not lose them."  
  
"That won't be a problem," I muttered throwing away the radio and taking a chance after glancing at the map again. I dodged down an alley and behind the same hotel Shaw had been waiting by for hours.   
  
As I sped through the alley everything felt like it slowed down and sped up at the same time.  
  
There was no way I was going to be in time to stop Shaw.  
  
I had more then enough time to get things done.   
  
I ripped my e-brake and actually managed to drift around the last corner, slamming the brakes on before I got close enough to catch Shaw's attention. Once again, I was more then a little pissed off that Hobbs had taken my gun. Just outright shooting Shaw would be so much easier then anything else right about now. That action I would happily go to jail for. Since, he apparently, hadn't done anything...yet. Hitting his car with mine would have been another lovely option but hitting the hundred or so people standing between our cars, staring at the 'race', while I was at it would probably be frowned upon.  
  
I had fourteen years of friendship with on and off sex where I was regularly disgarded by the one person in the world I would probably ever love completely; and I was okay with that. I was perfectly fine with that so long as he was still breathing.   
  
And in that instant I could almost see what was about to happen like it was a premonition. I jumped out of the car, ripping off my long trench coat as I moved forward shoving forcefully through the panicked crowd; for once grateful for my near 5'11" in height.   
  
In seconds Shaw's Mercedes moved forward into the intersection and to me it was as if it was in slow motion. I knew I couldn't stop it completely; there was just not enough time. But I could do something; even if it wound up being dying with him.   
  
I saw the cars collide and Han's car flipped into the air and for a moment I was confused because I still felt like everything was creeping along underwater. Shaw couldn't have been going fast enough to do that. It didn't seem possible.  
  
Then everyone around me screamed, seemingly at once, and life returned to it's normal pace. The sound of metal screeching along pavement was all I could hear as I watched Han's car skid across the street, somehow by a miracle coming closer to me. I knew I had about three minutes, most probably less, to act knowing the amount of NOS Han probably had put into his systems. I was near praying that he had used his NOS on the road and that the tanks were empty. I doubted I was that lucky.  
  
I wanted to run to him. I could hear the ticking clock in my head counting down each second I needed to get him out. But I couldn't move; not yet.   
  
It was as if I was frozen, eyes darting between the crumpled upside down car with it's struggling occupant and the sociopath walking past it casually talking on the phone.   
  
Total sociopath. Didn't the fucker feel an ounce of guilt?  
  
In the back of my mind I made a note about the call to track it at a later date. If I was still alive that is.   
The second Shaw's back was to me I felt like I could move again and with every ounce of strength in my body I ran the final few feet towards the vehicle that was just beginning to really burn.   
  
I finally understood a true adreneline response. I knew how fathers's could lift cars off their children. I knew how mother's instintivally knew where their children were and if they were in trouble. More importantly, I knew what it meant to have your life flash before your eyes. Because, I might not be his; but, Han Lue had been my life since he offered me his hoodie on a chilly night in November of 1998 in downtown Los Angeles  for no other reason then I apparently looked cold.   
  
That night was all I could think about as I dropped to my knees next to the broken Mazda and reached in, ignoring the smell of gasoline and growing heat. My eyes met Han's and for once he looked completely vulnerable to me. There was first pain, followed by confusion and then sheer terror as I ripped at the harness holding him into the seat. I remember various times in my life wishing to see this man's stoic countenace shaken and I immediately took it all back. I never want to see this again.  
  
"Trish, get out of here before it blows," he mumbled to me, not seeming to even question my presence.  
I ignored him and contined counting seconds down in my head, listening to the sound of gasoline hitting the pavement from the punctured tank.   
  
"Trish! Please go," he choked out, eyes wide and staring at me in a panic which didn't do anything to calm my own nerves. Han Lue does not panic. Ever. It should be a universal rule. "You can't die too."  
  
"And I will not just stand here and let you die you asshole. So, shut up," I snapped, refusing to let my internal hysteria out in my voice. I could just barely make out the sound of a voice screaming Han's name and vaugely wondered why the hell whoever was yelling wasn't over here helping me.   
Not to mention where my supposed team was.  
  
Just then the harness snapped and I immediately grabbed Han under his shoulders and pulled hard ignoring the idea of a neck or back injury, and his pained scream, in my desperate need to get him out of the car. I fell backwards onto the pavement from the weight of his body just as I heard the sound, and felt the heat, of the explosion.   
  
The last thought I had before the pain hit and everything went completely black was that I was glad I was with him in the end 'cause I couldn't have survived losing him.


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Prologue for full disclaimer. In short, I own nothing but Trish.

_November 1998_  
  
The engines and music were just as loud as they would have been back home. The air was still filled with the combined smells of various types of smoke, motor oil and gasoline. Even the skanky hoes were typical. It was all incredibly normal and familiar; yet, completely different in a way that I hadn't anticipated.   
  
Los Angeles street racing was a whole different animal when compared with Barstow.   
  
First of all it was bigger. And not just the amount of people gathered in the empty lot behind the wharehouse. Something about the atmosphere just made me feel smaller and more insignificant then even growing up as a bastard kid in a town of only around twenty-two thousand had already done.    
I was used to being ignored. Ignored I could handle.   
  
It was the weird stares I was getting that were starting to make me nervous. Every eye that saw me seemed to be both asking me who I was and telling me to move along all at once.   
  
To be fair, I did get a few appreciative looks at my car. A classic, mint condition 1964 1/2 white mustang that I knew, even before arriving here, was a damn good car. It just wasn't good enough and I had never had any intention of tryin to prove differently. In Barstow it had been one of the faster cars; here in LA it was just a nice form of transportation. Hell, I didn't even have a NOS system.   
  
We had been a little more traditional back home.   
  
So why was I leaning against the side of my car wearing jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers if I had no intention of racing then? Why was I freezing and putting up with the strange looks?   
  
A few reasons; one, I had been in Los Angeles for five months and had yet to develop anything resembling a social life and two, I was looking for a poker or a blackjack game. Money was tight again and working at a local coffee shop just wasn't going to cut it in a few weeks. I refused to dip into my savings for something as simple as a rent check when I knew I could make twice what I needed from one good card game.  
  
Trouble was finding a high stakes card game in LA that I wouldn't wind up getting shot at for sneezing funny. No one around here wanted to invite an eighteen year old girl, brand new to the city, into their already established games. It's like they thought they were being set up for someone.   
  
I mean, technically they were correct. They were being set up; just not for someone else. Not that anyone has ever believed sweet, innocent looking Patricia O'Conner with her strawberry blonde hair and her big blue eyes could cheat anyone out of anything all on her own. But that's what I do.   
  
I'm a card shark. I refuse to call myself a gambler because I hate games where I can't control the outcome. Dice or wheels of any type that leave the winner up to random chance are pointless and a waste of money. Pool, darts, hell even car racing - anything that revolves around a learned and practiced skill are what I stick to. I just prefer cards.   
  
I learned how to count them when I was thirteen and my pseudo-step-father dujour realized I could calculate pi to fifteen digits in my head. Quickly. He was the only one of my mother's random slew of playmates that had a job that didn't involve cars or liquor. The man was a math teacher and he taught me to gamble because he paid his way through college by doing it.  
  
He was always my favorite.  
  
My mother just thought it was weird. That I was weird. Admittedly, she decided this long before the card counting began. I was an inconvienance from the day I came screaming into her life on January 21st 1980 and I became just plain 'weird' when I was six and she caught me putting the VCR back together after disassembling it to learn how it worked.  
  
Funny how she never complained about my 'weirdness' when I reached ten and was fixing our neighbors electronics and getting paid for it.   
  
I couldn't help frowning once more as I tuned into another conversation happening nearby; another one about nothing other then cars. Don't get me wrong, I like cars well enough. I like driving fast; I even somewhat enjoy racing, sometimes. But don't these people talk about anything else?  
  
I knew if it really came down to it I could swallow my pride and track down the asshole for some money. I knew he was in LA; last I heard our town's biggest troublemaker was finishing up community college and headed for the police academy in January. He'd probably be rude to me. He'd remind me once again that it was my fault his parents split up (because of course I forced his father to have sex with my mother while I was an egg) and he had been stuck in Barstow when our father got transferred to a different base on the east coast. He'd make me feel like an asshole for deferring MIT after my 'skank' of a mother died a few months earlier (ignoring the fact that I couldn't pay for it without her help and turning eighteen had made 'Dad' totally disappear). He'd point out how much better then me he was because he was on the 'right side of the law' (like I wasn't there when he got arrested for racing, and crashing, stolen cars a mere four years earlier).   
  
Then he'd cave and give me my rent money for the month; probably so he'd feel better about himself. Our relationship had never been what you could call healthy. I should probably blame our mother's animosity towards each other but it was easier to blame Brian then two dead women who both got screwed over by my sperm donor.  
  
The next second I was pulled from my internal rantings as a weight landed around my shoulders and I jumped a few inches in the air, squeaking in surprised fright. A lightly amused chuckle came from behind me and I turned cautiously to see the most gorgeous man I had ever seen in my life staring at me with a smirk.   
  
"You looked cold," was all he said as I kept staring, my eyes sweeping up and down his form as I assessed him further.   
  
Tall. Asian. Dark eyes. Dark hair fighting between short and long. Perhaps two to three years older the I was at the most. White t-shirt and dark jeans. Work boots. Cigarette tucked into the top of his ear. I just barely managed to stop myself from asking if he considered Fonzi his role model.  
  
"Nice car," he added and I nodded. "Do you talk?"  
  
"Umm, yea. Hi?" I finally replied and pulled at whatever he had dropped on top of me to see that it was a fairly large hoodie. "I'm Trish. Trish O'Conner."  
  
"Han," was all he responded with, well that and a brief head nod before he leaned back on my car with me and proceeded to light the cigarette I had noticed earlier.   
  
We stood together against my car, both of us back to observing the crowd, with me fidgeting slightly as I began to feel more and more awkward at the silence. After about ten minutes had elapsed and he was onto his second cigarette I snapped a bit and asked, "I was cold?"  
  
"That's what I said," he replied without looking at me.  
  
"Okay James Dean. Stoic and too cool for the room much? You don't happen to drive a Spyder do you?"  
That I was happy to note brought the slightest hint of a smile to his face and if I thought the boy was attractive before, now I nearly fell over.  
  
He finally just shook his head and responded with a simple, "I wish."  
  
"Soooo, what do you drive?" I finally just asked when I realized he wasn't about to elaborate and frowned when he just pointed towards the crowd. "Thanks, that cleared that up," I muttered in response, glaring at the chuckle my comment produced.   
  
"Do you really care what I drive?"  
  
"Not particularly," I admitted. "Just seemed like a good conversation starter considering the locale."  
  
"I'm not really a big talker," he told me in a tone that implied it was a big secret.   
  
I rolled my eyes, smiling and replied, "I'm somehow not all that shocked." The silence stretched further and I watched him go through another three cigarettes before speaking again, "You know, those will kill you."  
  
"So could a lot of things," he mumbled, barely glancing away from the crowd of girls I realized he was studying.   
  
"Picking out tonight's conquest?"  
  
"Who said I hadn't already?" he asked me with a smirk that had me wrinkling my nose in disgust.  
  
"You assume far too much. I just met you."  
  
"I never said it was you. Gotta go kid," he responded and proceeded to just walk away leaving me standing there against my car wearing his hoodie to watch as he approached a blonde in a tiny scrap of fabric that barely qualified as a dress.  
  
"And he said I looked cold? Jesus Christ," I mumbled to myself and stuffed my hands into the pockets of his hoodie. I felt a scrap of paper in the otherwise empty pockets and cautiously pulled it out and read it out loud to myself, "Callahan's Pub. Downtown 1pm. Sundays. $300 first ante. How the fuck did he even know?!"  
  
I watched the mysterious and amusingly strange man walk away with the tiny blonde and couldn't help but laugh at bit as they got into a bright yellow car that, despite the distance, I knew to be a Mazda if only because I had seen it once before a year earlier. It stood out just as much then as it did now.   
  
Specifically when it was parked outside my mother's small town bar for her yearly blackjack tournament. A blackjack tournament I had played in; but didn't remember seeing him at.  
  
"Well, we are just full of surprises aren't we Mr. Han," I muttered and shook my head before getting into my own vehicle and driving off to my small apartment. I would hopefully have a long day tomorrow lightening the wallets of what I was sure to be some grumpy old men based on the name of the pub and I needed my sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First meeting out of the way. I'm still getting a feel for the characters at this moment. I'm hoping they start to feel a little more comfortable as I continue to write them so don't give up on me if you think they're a little wooden right now. I subscribe to the theory that Better Luck Tomorrow Han is our Han and in 1998 (at least in my 1998) he'd be around 20; so, a little older, a little wiser...but still hovering right over young, cocky, reckless and male (which automatically adds in 'a little stupid' to the equation).
> 
> Reviews and constructive criticism appreciated. Flames not so much.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we have the prologue. First off, please don't kill me for leaving things very ambiguous. This is the prologue remember. Chapter One will be flashing back quite a few years to really get the story background established. I figure if the filmmakers can screw with us by making us love Han when we know the dude's dead in the long run then I can start my story smack dab in the middle of the action and whet your pallets a little. Speaking of the filmmakers; does anyone else feel a little bit bad for them. They shot all of Tokyo Drift and killed Han...and then had focus groups tell them that he was their favorite character in the movie and everyone was a little 'meh' on Sean (the supposed 'star' of the film - who I always thought came across as a cheap Brian rip off). You know that had to be when they decided to make Tokyo Drift a prequel so they could use Han again. Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  
> Oh also, I don't hate Brian's character even a little bit. I actually adore Brian's character. Paul Walker is legit one of my favorite actors - outside of this series even more so. Trish just has, umm, issues? They'll be explained. Everything in life is a matter of perception. One man's trash is another man's treasure and all that.
> 
> I haven't decided if the rest of the story will be written in first person POV or not. I usually write in third-person-limited; switching POVs between two or three characters when necessary. In this case I'm fairly certain, even if I stick to third-limited it will only be Trish's POV either way (possibly with some Han throw in at times). The prologue was approached almost as if it was a voice-over that you would see in a movie or tv-show being that the source material for this is a film.
> 
> Before anyone jumps on me about the accident/explosion and how it was portrayed here vs. the movie - I asked my two uncles a few questions. One is a firefighter and one is a mechanic/amateur race car driver. They both gave me a more realistic time-frame for the car to be able to burn before it would explode. Realistically the gasoline - being that we saw the fuel tank had been punctured and therefore it wasn't all contained in one tight space - could straight burn for at least two or three minutes before it would fully blow. The mechanic uncle said the 'problem' would be the NOS tanks but depending on where the initial fire was located, and how much NOS was actually in the tanks, the clock on the actual car going up would be extended or shortened. Trish was taking a calculated risk either way; but if someone you loved was in a lethal car crash and you had even thirty seconds to possibly get them you - wouldn't you try?  
> And I'm done. Subsequent authors notes will not be novel length...Pinky-Promise.
> 
> Reviews and constructive criticism are like my own personal batch of cupcakes and are appreciated as such. Flames will be reacted to accordingly.


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